UK's Bates CHI & Partners, a wholly-owned operating subsidiary of one of the world's largest communications services groups WPP Group Plc, has agreed to acquire business and assets of Bangalore-based Temple Advertising Pvt Ltd, as per a release.
The deal amount remains undisclosed but an earlier media report pegged it at around Rs 200 crore.
Temple is a boutique advertising agency which was co-founded in 2004 by Manmohan Anchan, Vidur Vohra and Srikanth VS. It has worked with leading Indian brands across media and entertainment, automotive, fashion and retail, foods, education and real estate.
Its clients include Embassy Group, eTV Kannada, Reliance Trends, Sumeru Frozen Foods, Vaswani Group and Wipro Technologies. Temple employs approximately 40 people.
This investment marks a further step towards WPP's declared goal of developing its networks in fast-growth and important markets and sectors. WPP is targeting at least 40-45 per cent of revenues to come from each of fast-growth markets and new media over the next five years.
In India, the firm generates revenues of about $500 million (including associates) and employs 13,000 people. In Asia, the Group (including associates) generates revenues of $5 billion and employs over 48,000 people.
It has been active in expanding through the inorganic route and the latest deal takes its total acquisition tally to around half a dozen in the past few years. Early this year WPP’s wholly owned global marketing communications agency JWT acquired a majority stake in Mumbai-based Social Wavelength, a full-service social media agency, for an undisclosed amount.
Last July, WPP acquired 47.5 per cent stake in Mumbai-based Interspace Communication Pvt Ltd for an undisclosed amount.
WPP is made up of leading companies in advertising, media investment management, information, insight & consultancy, public relations & public affairs, branding & identity, healthcare communications, direct, promotion & relationship marketing; specialist communications.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
